Two Comtemplate Feelings
by Icewind136
Summary: A vague, philosophical, and angsty story about one night fighting crime and two people in denial. To be interpreted however you wish.


Notes: I am inexplicably squeamish about names. Like they're are going to hunt me down and…don't know. Forcibly erase my stories? Meh. So, no names.

Disclaimer: Don't own Niteowl or Rorschach. Look, NAMES. Now they're going to find me…

Warning: None? Too much thinking?

I love reviews very, very much.

It was night of dank winds and cat's screams in the city. Half the lights seemed to be flickering or dead, even the neon seemed ephemeral and did nothing to make the city less surreal. Dead leaves and cigarette butts rotted quietly in corners. Darkness is well settled into the city, has long since made itself at home in bars, streets, and alleys. It's late enough that the population has switched entirely, and is almost ready to roll over again into daylight people. It is four o'clock, and the people who've been out all night are going home.

For most of the nightlife, the purpose of spending their time awake away from the sun is to avoid things—people, work, themselves. Their reason is to forget, or stop thinking, or to perpetuate their various psychoses. Temptation is a stone that rolls downhill.

They might think they're different. They're noble, after all. They aren't the nightlife; they're cleaning it up. This ecstatic, riotous party of souls—they don't revel, they clean up afterwards. They know they should dream of the day when they don't have to do this, but they don't.

It's too exhilarating, exciting, adrenaline rush waiting on the outside of the bacchanalian horde waiting for something silent waiting for the hormones, chemicals to spill over waiting for the scream—leap into action, bloody fists and just as much intimidation, fast or slow or however you want this done just do it, just smother violence with violence but like knows like, right? And maybe they're the only ones who can do anything about this, because they're the only ones right there. Some of them wait on rooftops and in aircraft but they're not really above it, not above it like men in uniforms think they are, not like they're supposed to be. They're people of the dark too, they're what happens when daylight doesn't intervene, daylight with its own problems that hide so much better.

Darkness is worn a little thin, on the edge of the knife with the sun's rays, dawn never breaks so much as the night lifts. The daylight city will be waking up soon, and the nighttime city must sleep. It is five o'clock.

It's been too short a night. They have tried not to think and it hasn't been working as well as usual. They are walking home lying to themselves.

---

D:

Tired footsteps drag a little down sewer pathways. No one can see—he can relax a little bit. He doesn't have to watch out, so he has no choice but to look in. He doesn't like what he sees. He tells himself he doesn't really believe it, though. For one, he doesn't feel like he's in—don't say it—he doesn't feel like that, not that happy. He feels tired and a little bit hopeless. He has his own memories of that feeling, of high school dates and holding hands. That can't be right. Besides, that's just the sort of thing he'd do, just the sort of person he'd fall—no—just what he'd do. It was just that masochistic, and he couldn't be that predictable, right? Just the sort of person he would start to need. No. No, not need, want, he says, and that's true too. Want is fine, safe. It's distasteful but it's a weaker evil. Lust. A body, and, and, and…a face and hands, no, but he needs them, needs a face, he wants that face, not just any face, goddamn it. He turns and slams his fists into the wall, expecting some kind of release, but all he gets are slimy gloves and an embarrassed turn and walk away, home.

---

R:

He still had to be wary, but that takes so little attention, after all this time. He still had to be aware, of course he can never let his guard down but he's walked these streets a thousand times and he knows they don't hold him any good will, even though they wouldn't tell him outright he knows them well enough to know when they're lying, to know when they're hiding something from him, and he'd know when something was wrong.

He was free to think. He didn't want to, but how could he stop? He did not consider drowning his thoughts or turning to something more pleasant any more than he considered skipping a night of this. The night was over, and with it his chance to masquerade as a creature of action, to loose himself in motion and force and justice, and now he had to come back to this, his own miniature conglomeration of filth and sin.

Want, nagging doubts, hunger, fatigue, want…still couldn't leave him alone after an entire night. He climbed the stairs to his apartment, light-footed without any conscious effort, creeping across the wooden slats to entertain the silence and hold its protection, un-shattered by sound, the squeak of a loose step. He unlocks the door, steps inside. There's food here, some, and he can give in to this even if he can't allow the others. He can eat and sleep, he can give himself that much humanity, allow that much weakness, if he doesn't so much as consider the others. If such things are going to get bad again, if they've gotten out of hand, such indulgences will be lost. Two, three, four days without sleep will banish the thought of anything else. Two days without food will do the same, but that makes him weak, makes him shake with exertion at things that should be easy, and if he went for too long he could collapse, which would certainly get him killed. He couldn't show weakness here, not him, and not in his city.

Tonight he'll sleep but he's not really sure he deserves it. His mind is turning down bad paths…food and sleep are things his body needs, eventually. He doesn't give in to what he wants. What he wants…no. He doesn't do that, he doesn't want things like that, doesn't want people, doesn't want touch. Lust. He almost can't say it, doesn't want to say it. Depravity means denial, in his self-inflicted world, and he wants to get this sorted out so that he can sleep and eat and do his job without shaking.

For some reason his mind falls to a scene in a park. A parent and a child. The child picks a white flower, presents it beamingly to the parent, who seems genuinely gratified by such a common gift. The parent, instead of rebuking the child for killing the beautiful thing, smiles.

He doesn't believe in love, not the kind people profess on their knees with overdone words and fake-looking smiles. It's always an excuse, or a lie, or something terrified people try to find. People are afraid to be alone, so afraid they tell mutual lies and climb in bed together, hide under the covers.

Yet the scene among the flowers…clean. Pure.

He wants to be like that. He wants that.

Maybe it's true.

But he's dirty, too.

He falls asleep.

(I will keep writing if I get reveiws. I'm a new writer and I need encouragement. YOU HAVE POWER OVER ME. Use it.)


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